The present invention relates generally to semiconductor fabrication, and in particular, to methods that address carbon incorporation in an interpoly oxide.
Uncontaminated substrates are critical to obtaining high yields in microelectronic device fabrication. While the fabrication process is generally designed to address as many sources of contamination as possible, often, the source of the contamination will be one of the processing steps. For example, multilayer layer resist masks are often used to pattern substrates. As prior art masks often comprise polymeric resins, photo-sensitizers, and organic solvents, residual polymers, organic components and particles are typically left on the surface of the device after the ashing process.
Prior art cleaning techniques to remove such contaminates include elongated dry-strips or regular wet-chemistries using solutions such as Piranha (H2SO4/H2O2) or SC1 (H2O/H2O2/NH4OH) solutions. Although these cleaning techniques have been suitable for their intended purposes, they have not been suitable in all cleaning situations.